We have made a good start towards our Wairarapa Moana Inquiry learning. Our first in-class session with Zoe saw us learn about wetlands and water catchments.
Here is our catchment salute!!
In our reading this week, we have been learning about the life cycle of eels and giant kokopu, and have also read about fish tagging, counting the fish population, and on what lives in drains under the cities.
We have been learning about the water cycle, conducting experiments to prove theories about transpiration and evaporation.
To test for transpiration (water that is drawn up from the roots of plants, and then released as vapour), we placed plastic bags on some tree branches, sealed with rubber bands, in the morning.
Later on in the day, we went and checked on them. We found water had condensed inside the plastic bag and had pooled on the bottom. We can now see that plants release water vapour into the air, even thought we can't see it. We also learnt that plants are responsible for 10% of the atmospheric moisture through transpiration (and we also learnt how to get water if we were stuck somewhere and only had a plastic bag!).
To test the theory of evaporation from large bodies of water, we poured some water into the bottom of a large bowl, placed a small empty bowl in the middle, then covered it all with plastic. We then placed a rock (or metal container) in the center of the plastic and left it outside in the sun.
When we went back to check on them later, the one with the stone on the top of it had a small amount of water in the small bowl. The water had evaporated from the large bowl, condensed on the plastic, then dripped down into the small bowl.
The experiment with the container on it did not seem to work so well. We wondered if it was the container that was the problem, or (more likely) that there was a gap in the plastic on the top.
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